hi guys I have an idea for a monthly piece I would like to set up…
Friday Food Thought Exchange- lunch and good conversation!

On maybe the last Friday of each month in small space, most likely a white cube space in the Fine art studios we can invite fellow students on our course to sit down and share both food and talk about a particular topic…
the food will be our usual simple but tasty home made stuff like bread and sauces and pasta, rice, pizza ect… Each month there will be a different topic of conversation that I or one of you or someone else wants to discuss.

The first being about ‘audience’ and what as artist we want from our audience, what relationship we are trying to make, everyone talking specifically about there own practices, own ideas and then more widely about the role or experience of the audience in contemporary art. I’ll lead this one but everyone be involved like the ‘Shop’ talk and then next one maybe one you lead it more… we could talk about anything that we want other input for.

I think we could make friendly, relaxed, open and generous atmosphere, speak, listen and get to know people.

I already got some cushions and some bowls and big pans for cooking, plus gonna use cctv and mic to record it.

for those of use interested in relational art and discursive work this piece will really allow us to actively engage with what it means to make a such work and as a way of personally experiencing a piece like that of Rirkrit Tiravanija pictured bellow. To find out what it means, what happens and to try to ascertain the value of creating such things

an example of his work

anyone wanna help or even just come along?

ash, ill need help or advice on cctv stuff?

I was thinking pasta, bread, wine and few types of sauces… ellie sorry about all the wheat- just make cheap and filling lunch plus I already have a big bag of pasta… I will pay for it all this time if anyone like the idea next time they can chip in too.

I have been trying to commit to this experiment over the last month, my first attempt last only 36 hours… and I thought about TV most of that time… I love watching TV, films, DVDs, hour after hour, series after series, night after night… but it no longer makes my life more full, its just a passive way to entertain my brain instead of getting of with my dissertation and all the other thing could be doing with my time. Tv is a perfectly good way to entertain yourself, beyond just surviving, life is just entertaining your brain… but this body of work is about trying new ways to see if different input and more output will lead to me being more productive in finding/creating happiness and fufillment. Plus I have watched every decent series available on 4OD & iplayer!

Parameters:

DURING TERM TIME

No watching TV- Including iplayer, 4OD, other internet sites and DVD’s

No watching films alone

Only alone watching- art and artist videos and other research material.

Thoughts/Hopes/Ambitions:

With more time freed up and no easy distraction or source of pleasure I will find it more tempting to endeavour with all the books I have. Books I have brought over the last few years with the deep desire and intention of becoming more knowledgeable on those topics. It will also focus my attention on my own output and allow me more time to develop skills… whatever they may be. I am more likely to stumble the internet but this normally leads to interesting thing and new sources of knowledge so that will be good, plus I get bored of this after an hour or so.

Most importantly I hope it will mean that I sleep at night and can get up in the mornings and don’t feel so tired, having not stayed up till 4am watching 5 episodes of some random program.

so here goes… it begins 2hours 24 minutes without TV (but with everything else) and counting…

The inspiration for the title and theme of this work comes from a conversation with artist Martin Creed during a talk/performance he gave at the AUCB early this year. Its was very engaging and funny but also quite annoying because Creed is very illusive with his answers and it was hard to tell whether the persona he enacted in front of us was at all genuine… rubbing his head a lot, pacing back and fore in silence and struggling for answers and coming across like he thinks he is a failure… having seen other interviews of his on TV, I think Creed is very clever performer that relies on an audience or interviewer doing a lot of work ascertain worth and meaning from his seemingly straightforward and profound answers which can seem at odds with the work he has made.

Anyway doesn’t really matter what I think of him and his work, it was one answer he gave to why he made art that sparked my work now… it went along the lines of ‘everything I do is an experiment to make my life better’ which is a very logical reason to do things, I think most things people do is for this purpose although this aim is not always at the forfront of peoples thoughts and people aren’t logical.

from www.martincreed.com

For Creed that answer maybe sincere but what he actually make is always pieces of fine art… I like much of his work and simplicity of many of his proccesses of creating but how do you come up with putting blue tack on a wall if that was your aim and most his pieces don’t seem they would change someones life for the better… I guess an artists need to make things is fulfiled by making things which makes life better… and some of the cathartic and methodic nature of his work perhaps allows him to use his personal traits productivly… whatever it is for him… I am not gonna focus on the production of art objects and these experiments don’t have much relation to art… they will merely be my attemps to make life better… prodominatly my life.

hello guys so todays meeting never really happened because some of you left and others weren’t here… there’s a lot to do and very little time so plans and decisions have to be made quickly and deadlines will be very very tight to give this thing the chance to be the success we want it to be.

so first of all on Tuesday 20th there will be a meeting and everyone must be there! It will be at 10:30 unless we have the van early then it will be after that… if it is at 1030 then Ellie kp you will just have to miss the start can’t help this with only 9 days to go don’t have the time to wait around and not sort this stuff out.

and secondly I will get the plans started by posting what I see as the to do list and when things need to be done by, if i have forgotten things then lets us know and we need to start taking responsibility for different parts of making the event, we can delegate theses on Tuesday at the latest and we will all have to do a lot of work and may feel the pressure of it but i think we are all able and with the support of the rest of the group can and will pull off an amazing event. Now is the time we need to really commit after all its just another 2 weeks of our life to make something we have been dreaming up for the last year… now is the time we prove to ourselves and the course and rest of the world that we are a group of people who make seriously good art works!

Although I had truly written off getting a shop todays meeting has given me a little hope, Martin is very optimistic that we will be able to get this one because we no longer have to over come the issue of landlords not wanting to commit us using the space because they are holding out for a long-term tenant… but this short time means we have a lot of planing and work to do in a very short period of time…

However this time although we have started formulating the plan of action I’m gonna wait till we know for sure before I make more substantial proposal because the rest of the project where I have had to plan with many assumptions and guessed parameters just to keep all the whole thing moving in the right direction and then things completely change which has retrospectively made a large amount of my hard work a waste of time…. many budgets… many plans… many emails…

WE GET THIS SPACE AND I WILL BE SO HAPPY… I was to talking to the tutor Tom Chamberlin this evening and showing him some of the products and telling him about our plans and I remember how good it is what we are doing and thought about how amazing its gonna look when we have a shop full of these products… we talk about have some of the products weren’t printed perfectly all over so you could read it all but he said it won’t matter because you already get a sense of what they are about from each other and that they will become just part of a whole experience which is where most of the value or understanding of the piece will come. I also loved sharing with him these excellent design product all of your work, cos it is fucking good and funny and so engaging and tactile. He was asking how we were gonna price things and keep it in the capitalist system of exchange so I then handed him some money and his face light up with astonishment… he said immediately ‘this is good paper’ and told how Patrick had made drawn it and some of the ideas within… he was impressed. The best part was that after talking about the idea of the audience questioning what they could get with it and its value or the value of the products he said ‘that they might choose to keep the note instead’ and I loved that he said it cos he’s not one of us and he could see what i think that the great thing about Patrick’s notes they an seem to posses an intrinsic value because of the realness and because of the craft, skill beauty of the illustration.

I think Patrick we should print another 2 packs because its budgeted for and they are so good.

so let get this shop and make the ‘Shop’ we intend and enjoy all our hard work paying off finally!

hey all see you tomorrow to have our first group convo since before easter.

There are many emerging ideas and ways to complete the project and realise our ambitions (at least most of them).

at the moment project ‘Shop’ may become a series of exciting different performances/works in the public arena… I’m pretty excited about the ideas being suggested and that instead of one piece that runs for a series of days we would have 4 or 5 pieces happen on different days meeting different audiences in different locations.

FUCK it! oh fred what have you done, you’ve ruined your veneer of professionalism and the wholesome family appeal of the project by saying fuck on a public site… twice!

so my friends I been thinking about how we are not gonna be those people who make that successful community art event in a shop, that becomes a local talking point, that is a solid and beautifully conceived response to the specific context… and we are not gonna be that art collective from Bournemouth that creates a closing down sale in the busiest retail street in Britain… but that is fine because we’re not gonna be those people who just stop and say oh we tried but didn’t happen.

the way I see it is… we have designed and printed all these products… we have got a shit load of glue sticks on the way… so lets cut them out, stick them together and get them out there, I think all of us are already thinking in this direction… and I think unless anyone can state otherwise… we are not getting a shop and we don’t have the time or probably money to build one especially with all the health and safety issues that would entail...so let make portable market stalls and for 4 or 5 days pitch up outside empty shops and even functioning ones… if we want we can give out fake money to get people involved and could have explainers like before or we just be weird street sellers giving away products because our shop have gone under… we can move around or have more than one around town, and see what we can get away with… put up lots of signs… yes we will as ever consider what we do and how we present the work, how the specific context will create certain interpretations of the piece but it doesn’t have satisfy anyone but ourselves… we’re doing it, we’re paying for it.

and we can talk in our presentation about what is lost through this realisation of our idea, what is gained and what is changed… all it but we will have achieve something.

I think we should just make this happen, afterwards we can consider its achievements and failures but while making happen lets keep key our minds what we want to make for this project… and what we individually wanted… to know these things and find ways to realise the ones that can be achieved.

to get us started on key goals:

The audience we wanted was the general shop going public of Bournemouth town centre… so that’s where we will do it.

We wanted to highlight the absurdity of selling, the empty promises and accepted and inherent bullshit of marketing and product packaging…

We wanted to question the inflated sense of desire and need created in this capitalist system… to provoke thoughts around value and worth

We wanted to use the products as talking points on different idea relating to consumer culture and role as consumer… the products still convey the ideas even outside a fake shop frame work… and the audience will still be able to take home and posses the product container… it is less clearly centre on their role, less obviously self-reflective as they would not be entering a confined performance space… but still scope for this to be a key experience for the audience.

We wanted to draw attention to the empty shops and question their future use… we can by making our pieces happen in front of them… and before the event would have been more balanced and positive well maybe our experience of trying to make things happen in these spaces has given us a less positive view for the future of these spaces for community/ art uses … sign saying closing down… another saying coming soon another shop providing you with the things they think you want but you probably don’t need( some thing more catchy i guess)

We wanted to make a fun, lively and engaging experience.. we will

We wanted to take outwork outside of a gallery context.. it will be

We wanted to make work to response to a space and to the context of that space… it’s still the high street

We wanted to promote inquisitive nature of people, to get people thinking and questioning their experience… we can do this

We wanted to art work that didn’t require an art education to relate to … you even need to know it was art to become involved

We wanted to utilise humour and the common understanding of buying and selling products to make work that was inclusive.. we are doing that

We wanted people to be able engage on many levels, that audiences of different ages could become part of and interact with the experience of art… it will be different but still this will be set to happen

For me it’s about turning our conversation around this context into a work that does something beyond us… not change the world type stuff but make it considerably different for a period of time, give an experience this about and create for that place.

Most importantly to finish Project’ Shop’

Option update: I have just spoke to martin and he is speaking to Burlington arcade people and meeting them of Tuesday and says we still have options in Poole, we need to be realistic though all of these aren’t definite and may take more work and time than we have now, so I believe the market stalls are our best option.

Either way I think we should have a market stall at the Town center event on saturday the 24th so we have 16days till that… lots to do.

With Selfridges not working out and us being two weeks beyond the deadline for plan A… things are getting a lot harder, its hard to see what to do and why we have been doing all this work for so long and it’s getting a lot easier to think about giving up and accepting failure and also looking for reasons to blame for the slightly bleak situation the project is in. I am seeing my failure to achieve my goals and failing to turn this situation around again. today I received 6 big boxes full of paper bags. over a thousand bags costing over £200 and it depressed me to think of how motivated and happy I was when ordering them knowing that they were an important element to the experience we were creating and now… they just seem like £200 worth of brown bags.

we need to move on quickly and effectively

we need to find the quickest and easiest way to achieve an artistic experience with some value to us with in the next month.

So we have found ourselves in a very different place than we set out to be… and after the initial excitement of actually getting a space and it being London and WOO… my head started to hurt as my brain battled to find a way to make it happen and to make the core ideas and elements of the product work here… but for most this didn’t work to begin with and many just can’t work in this new context. Probably more than rest of you I have felt like this has not been a wholly positive step, maybe this is because my role and intention and the many things I wanted to get from the project where intrinsically linked to it being in Bournemouth and in a closed down shop…

That is just my brain being stupid and not wanting to let go of something I really cared about… and it’s not even being realistic… we have work for nearly a year now developing this strong multifaceted art work and we tried to make it happen and through reasons mostly beyond our control it didn’t work… and I’m really pissed off about that and I have passionately listed the things the work won’t be now and they were important things but screw being a pessimist… and I will not let my brain turn what is an amazing opportunity and experience for all us into negative….